House GOP votes to punt government shutdown battle to after November midterms

The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday night to punt the threat of another government shutdown until after the November midterm elections.

House lawmakers passed a bill to extend the current fiscal year’s funding levels until Dec. 4 via a measure called a continuing resolution (CR). It would extend several weeks into fiscal year (FY) 2027, which begins on Oct. 1.

It’s a victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and House Republicans, who are looking to avoid a messy federal spending fight right before what’s expected to be an uphill battle to retain their razor-thin majority.

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The current fiscal year saw the longest government shutdown in history, lasting from Oct. 1, 2025 until Nov. 12, 2025, as Senate Democrats blockaded GOP-led funding priorities for weeks in protest of spending cuts to federal healthcare programs.

And Republicans are warning that Democrats would almost certainly cause another government shutdown right before the election if the fight is not punted until after the early November midterms.

“Unfortunately, given that Democrats have already forced the two longest government  shutdowns in American history in this Congress, one of them for 78 days, they’ve already demonstrated they don’t care what kind of pain they inflict on the American people,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “They’ve shown there’s nothing they’d love more than a government shutdown as tens of millions of Americans head to the polls in November.”

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., told reporters Tuesday that he would vote against the bill along with the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, the panel tasked with overseeing yearly federal spending.

“I think that there are some drafting errors within the CR that give Customs and Border Patrol flexibility to move money around. The administration said that all of that was funded within reconciliation 2.0. and I think they’re creating other opportunities to transfer funds,” Aguilar said.

But even with the House’s victory, it’s not clear that the fight will be over before September.

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The GOP-led Senate is working on its own course on funding extension, with sources familiar with the process telling Fox News Digital that appropriators were crafting their own CR. They believe the House’s product lacked key extensions to certain programs that are expected to run out of funding come the Sept. 30 deadline.

Those programs, known as anomalies, were shipped to the Senate from the White House on Monday.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Fox News Digital that Republicans and Democrats, for the time being, were working together to thwart a shutdown.

He hoped to get the CR onto the floor as soon as this week, given that the House is set to leave Washington, D.C., by the end of the week for a long August recess.

“Look, we appreciate the House moving forward with theirs. It’s, you know, very clean,” Hoeven said. “There are just a few issues that we think need to be the rest. Because, obviously, we need to get Democrats on board with us, right now, they’re working with us.”

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The move has the full blessing of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

“I think it’s going to be really important that we figure out a path forward to get a bipartisan agreement to fund the government that will keep government open and ensure that government employees are getting paid,” Thune said. “And that is something that I intend to bring to the floor for a vote before the August break.